Thursday, 6 November 2008

JISC appointed Charles Beagrie to develop this Digital Preservation Policies Study back in March with a pretty small timeframe to deliver the goods. It's well worth a look if you're putting your own digital preservation policy together, especially if you're operating in the HE sector. The study provides a handy template of policy clauses that can be adapted for local needs. That should help people get started.

If I'm honest, it's the emphasis on context and mappings that I like best about the work (as an archivist I'm bound to like that ;-), right?). By examining policy documents in the areas of research, teaching and learning, information, library and records management, the study has identified how digital preservation supports the work of universities. This alignment of digital preservation policy to the business of the University is critical to answering questions about why digital preservation matters. Anyone needing to make the case for digital preservation should take a look at the detailed mappings to these wider university policies in the appendices.

What's the futureArch blog?

A place for sharing items of interest to those curating hybrid archives & manuscripts.

Legacy computer bits wanted!

At Bodleian Electronic Archives and Manuscripts (BEAM) we are always on the lookout for older computers, disk drives, technical manuals and software that can help us recover digital archives. If you have any such stuff that you would be willing to donate, please contact susan.thomas@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Examples of items in our wish list include: an Apple Mac Macintosh Classic II Computer, a Wang PC 200/300 series, as well as myriad legacy operating system and word-processing software.